The present invention relates to systems and methods for producing advertising inserts in general, and for producing customized advertising inserts in particular.
As a general matter, billing statements typically are generated en masse on a monthly or other periodic basis and sent to customers. These billing statements often have include a variety of different types of billing information, including lists of goods/services being invoices, total amounts due and other customer information such as name, address and the like. Unfortunately, this information leaves a significant amount of white space on a particular billing statement. In the past, this white space has been unusable and therefore has gone wasted.
In order to remedy the situation, some companies have taken to inserting a variety of promotional messages on their billing statements. Such promotional messages might, for example, might encourage the customer to purchase additional goods and/or services and might include customer relations information such as customer service telephone numbers, helpful hints, answers to frequently asked questions and, perhaps, some generic advertising attempts. In the past, however, such information has amount to little more than filler in a vain attempt to make use of what would otherwise would be wasted white space. Such information, moreover, generally would be relatively ineffective in conveying or inducing any customer activity with respect to purchasing additional goods/services from the company.
Moreover, to stimulate customer activity, companies in the past also have included advertising inserts with their billing statements. For example, a credit card issuer might include several stand alone advertising inserts with a credit card statement. These inserts might seek to induce the customer to purchase any of a variety of goods or services. In the past, such advertising insert were sent indiscriminately to a wide range of customers and therefore were relatively ineffective at generating customer interest in the advertised products and/or services.
What is needed, therefore, is a more efficient way to utilize white space on a billing statement to include effective advertising and other promotional messages with a given billing statement. It further would be useful if there were a way to produce customized advertising inserts that were directed to a particular customer. Perhaps such customized inserts could be easily correlated with a given billing statement.